Final thoughts

This chapter linked my research aims to current literature, outlining the eld and cri- tiquing it. I'll return to my research questions, and briey summarise some of the key critiques in this section.

Aim 1. How do people listen in dierent environments? How does the design of the built environment aect this?

It seems likely that the biggest missing aspect to this question is that of social context, discussed in Sections 2.5 on page 52 and 2.3 on page 41, with examples of how this could aect soundscape research questions given in Subsection 2.9.1 on page 73. Soundscapes as a rule tend to signicantly downplay social context: I argue that this is an oversight, and one which gives only part of the total picture. As well as listening, we should also examine not listening, or `dishearkening' the idea that people can ignore aspects they do not like. While we have tools to measure and categorise environments, I worry that these are being applied exhaustively, and that as a result we are generating metrics of limited value in understanding soundscape perception.

Aim 2. How do people learn to listen?

Listening has changed throughout history, and when and how people create sound is undoubtedly rooted in the culture it comes from. This is mostly documented by anthro- pologists, as discussed in Subsection 2.3.3 on page 46 and documented extensively in The Tuning Of The World (Schafer, 1977). Soundscape response then is most likely learnt, as is the language we use to access sound memories. As researchers this needs to be kept

in the forefront of our minds: while eliminating our own cultural conditioning is all but impossible, we should be as aware of it as possible.

Aim 3. How, and in what ways, do listeners dier?

Soundscape research seeks to measure environments rather than explain listening habits, as discussed in Section 2.2 on page 21. Exploring the dierences between listeners to discover dierence is as valuable as being able to measure spaces in a standardised way, as discussed in Subsection 2.9.3 on page 79.

Aim 4. Are we asking the `right' questions about the soundscape? What are good questions to ask?

There are poor links between question setting, and answering (covered in depth in Subsec- tion 2.6.1 on page 61), with many papers never clearly stating a good research question at all. It is important to be mindful of what it is we are really trying to nd out when doing any research: something as interdiciplinary and vaguely dened as soundscapes needs special attention, as acknowledged in the DEFRA report (Payne et al., 2009b). A good piece of research should begin with a clear epistemology, and then link this to eldwork in a logical way.

Aim 5. Why should quantitative researchers care about using qualitative data to inform soundscape policy, environmental planning, and acoustic measurement? Archetypally qualitative researchers are very good at discussing things, and poor at suggesting practical changes to make the world a better place. On the other hand, archetypally quantitative researchers rely too strongly on discipline-approved methods and methodologies, rarely have to justify their epistemology, and have a lack of creativity with research approaches. Overviews of these areas were covered in Sections 2.2 on page 21 and 2.3 on page 41. While this is grossly oversimplied, both groups need to work together to design studies which are useful, engaging, accurate and relevant.

Aim 6. A meta-question. What kinds of things is it possible to know about the soundscape?

Plural denitions of soundscape are in use (see Section 1.3 on page 5), which complicates this question somewhat. Soundscape as a concept though could be analysed from many perspectives, from a representation of social text to a psychological mind-state. Again, it's important to be as honest about what we don't or can't know, as what we do know.

This review has been highly critical of a wide range of literature. I hope that the main lessons learnt though are that soundscape studies is still a young eld, in many ways struggling to nd exactly where it sits. It is an optimistic, broad and multi-faceted concept, which straddles many elds, and does not attempt to adhere to one discipline. As a result the space it occupies is unclear. The critique, then, I propose as a way of moving forwards, of coming to terms with the shortfalls in the eld, and cleaning up some epistemological `fuzziness' along the way. In the next chapter, I show how I convert these critiques into a working methodology.

Chapter 3

Methodology

This was a dicult chapter to write for a very dierent reason to the rest of this document. In many ways, `methodology' is an unsuitable word for the process that goes between thinking and doing. Picking holes in the work of others is fairly simple on the face of it: using anything from an ontological disagreement to a mislabelled graph. Data analysis is a very dicult task, which constituted the majority of the eldwork research period. Joining up critique to action is a fraught process. The only principle that does not inhibit progress is anything goes (Feyerabend, 1993) easy to say when embarking on a piece of research, dicult to epistemologically make water-tight after the fact.

Advice I received from colleagues, supervisors and Strauss and Corbin (1998), my biggest methodological guides, was to be creative in research. Good research is not just about generating (or refuting) theory: it is about imagination and creativity (Thomas and James, 2006). A research method was generated, in good faith, that would be responsive to the data. The majority of this chapter was written after the fact and therefore justifying the methodology can feel like a listing exercise, a systematic refutation of various authors' various critiques.

This thesis is not a awless exploration of soundscape epistemology. While I suggest several theories as a result of this data, I also stress the importance for soundscapes for

thick description, creativity of approach, and above all, imagination about the research process as a whole. This chapter is a joining-up phase: a conversion of research aims, into critiques of other research, into creative solutions for complex questions. It gives background to the big metaphysical questions those of ontology, epistemology and pedagogy that in my opinion, are not questioned nearly enough. Imagination and creativity are the primary research goals, and the entire research process is oriented that way. Objectivity and validity are also important goals, but, in my view, are putting the cart before the horse at this stage in our soundscapes understanding.

3.1 Introduction

I will outline my assumptions and critiques from the literature review, justify my meth- odology choice, and nally document the steps I took in the research. Silverman (2005, p306) suggests a qualitative PhD methodology chapter could just as easily be titled `the natural history of my research', which seems tting. As an integrated, iterative process, the methodology was developed at the same time as doing a literature review, with the primary aim being to create a methodology responsive to that which I wish to nd out. Therefore both the critiques and solutions to them were developed somewhat in parallel, with the decision to use a qualitative, and then more specically Grounded Theory (GT) methodology made relatively early, colouring a lot of the design process. While this chapter is linear, the decision making process was not.

There are some key values guiding my work, outlined in the previous chapter, which primarily relate to epistemology and ontology. These are the research framework not the methodology itself, but the context within which it is developed.

Epistemology A qualitative, phenomenological approach is needed to complement, guide, and creatively explore both existing and new research. As a young, under-explored eld, it seems important that more in-depth, theory-building research is done, outside of any specic location-based research context. Using this approach allows

thick descriptive analyses of a range of individual phenomena; whereas quantitative research has a tendency to simplify complex research entities into binaries, to rank order these binaries, and ultimately to present them as antagonists (Sandelowski and Boshamer, 2008).

Location The listener has been under-represented and rarely studied directly in sound- scape research. As a result this is foregrounded both in my analysis, and my denition of what a soundscape is. My line of reasoning therefore requires the listener to be the object of study, not any one specic sound environment.

Standardisation I reject attempts to standardise attitudes to xed environments without rst understanding what it is that makes people respond to the same environment dierently. Our vocabularies and range of knowledges about sound environments should be lucid, detailed, and complete. To do this requires investigation of dier- ence, not of similarity.

The study consisted of twenty participants, each given a digital audio recorder (Zoom H2) and a log book, who kept a diary for two weeks. At the end of the fortnight, they were interviewed for up to an hour. The log books, interview data and audio recordings were then analysed using (mostly) qualitative methods. The aim was to allow people to highlight soundscapes that matter to them the most, collecting insights into what, where, and when people care about. My aims here are not statistical, or to judge or compare specic environments on a quantitative basis, but to explore what a soundscape is, see how stories from individual listeners correlate with models of listening (covered in section 2.8 on page 67), and to propose new models of soundscape evaluation, from the perspective of the listener, as guided by my aims.

A more traditional approach would be to analyse methodologies one by one, rejecting or approving aspects of each. Using an inductive-deductive (rather than the more common hypothetico-deductive) approach has resulted in a new, novel methodology, combining

aspects of Visual Sociology, Grounded Theory and the Diary-Diary Interview Method. There are three main aspects to the justication of this methodology:

1. How and why the methodology design speaks to my critiques of existing soundscape research.

2. A justication for the Grounded Theory process: both as a research framework and qualitative data analysis methodology.

3. A rationale for the research design itself : the sound diary method.

The application (and continuous development) of the method is covered in chapter 4. My methodology is Grounded Theory. My method is the Diary-Diary Interview Method for gathering data, and Grounded Theory theoretical coding for analysing it.

This chapter covers development of the methodology. The rest of this chapter is therefore split as follows:

Design requirements revisits my aims, and critiques of other soundscape research, summarising each research goal.

Grounded Theory explains what GT is, why I chose to use it, and explores the key critiques and schools of thought surrounding its application.

Research design covers the development of the method itself: the diary-diary interview process.

Key criticisms looks at what this study is not good for, but explains why these are inevitable.